


Not the Direction of Gravity

by Branch



Series: Tamashii [3]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 20:38:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Branch/pseuds/Branch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Al stumbles over the clue to finding his brother that he was looking for, in a way he didn't expect.  <span class="summary-meta">Drama with Angst and Philosophy, I-3</span></p><p></p><blockquote class="teaser">
  <p>Al picked an easy path, down by the lakeshore under the trees where the
          light rain wouldn't get him too wet. Sensei was probably right. His
          brain felt so full it might spill if he moved too fast, and his thoughts
          jostled against each other. He was pretty good at modern alchemical
          codes, but he'd been reading much older texts, and if you went back
          far enough it was as much philosophy as science and every statement
          seemed to mean at least three different things at once. Probably more,
          actually, but he had threes on the brain; it was Trismegistus' fault.
          And Salmon's. Mercury meant spirit meant animal, and where did that get him?</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Not the Direction of Gravity

## Al

" _Alphonse_! Get out of this house and take a walk!" 

Al looked up from his desk, blinking. "But... I'm studying..."

Sensei put her hands on her hips. "I know. You have bags under your eyes I could pack for vacation in, and the last time we sparred I wasn't even breathing hard." She pointed a commanding finger at the door. "Out!"

"But..." Al glanced out the window, protests taking on a faint note of desperation. "It's about to rain!"

She folded her arms and just loomed. Al sighed and marked his place with his pencil. "Yes, Sensei. It'll probably do me good, right?" 

Her mouth twitched and she put a hand on his head, half ruffle and half swat, as he passed her. "And quit stealing my lines."

* * *

Al picked an easy path, down by the lakeshore under the trees where the light rain wouldn't get him too wet. Sensei was probably right. His brain felt so full it might spill if he moved too fast, and his thoughts jostled against each other. He was pretty good at modern alchemical codes, but he'd been reading much older texts, and if you went back far enough it was as much philosophy as science and every statement seemed to mean at least three different things at once. Probably more, actually, but he had threes on the brain; it was Trismegistus' fault. And Salmon's. Mercury meant spirit meant animal, and where did that get him?

He toed a stone in the path, not kicking it, just rocking it in its bed of dampening dirt. Now that he was actually outside and didn't have a book in his hands, he wanted to do something physical. A swim would be nice; the sound of the lake's wavelets against the shore was soothing and tempting. He held out a hand and watched a few raindrops patter down onto his palm, thoughtfully.

Well... since he was going to get wet anyway...

Al stripped down to his undershorts and hung his clothes on the branch of a maple that looked dry underneath. He shivered a little as he waded in; it wasn't full summer yet, and the water wasn't exactly warm. He was laughing under his breath though. He didn't act on impulse too often, usually he had to be the sensible one. 

Maybe now he could see why Nii-san spent so much time grinning.

He sighed softly and launched himself out into the water, stroking toward the huge boulder some glacier had left halfway to the middle of the lake. He would see his brother again. He would. A few years was nothing; he could keep looking a lot longer than that. Apparently, he already had once. 

His breath felt like it was filling his lungs all the way up again by the time he reached the rock. He turned over and rested his head in a hollow and floated, looking up at the sky under his lashes. The rain made it look like the sky was coming down to meet him.

Well, after all, the dusty old philosophers and the shiny new scientists both agreed that all the world was one, in the end.

He wriggled his toes in the water, reminding himself that he wasn't studying right now. Maybe it would help divert him if he paid more attention to sensations. He took a moment to do so and chuckled. It felt very strange, once he noticed. The rain speckled down on part of him, busy and distracting, while the rest of him was underwater and barely felt the occassional current or the passing of a wave.

Come to think of it, his brain felt an awful lot like that. Al let his eyes drift half shut. Odd that thoughts could have sensation, too. But there was definitely a much-less-jostling part in there, underneath.

The more he thought about how the quiet part felt, the quieter everything got. Thoughts drifted instead of jostled. Symbols floated instead of flickered. The circled dot, for the sun, for the Eye, and for gold, and that made sense since "gold" meant inclusion. The inside of a circle. All the stages in one, destruction and creation together and that was life, wasn't it? The process of living was alchemy. Everything became something else from moment to moment, but somehow it was all still there. That was life.

And life was perfection. Always perfecting everything, refining until each thing was _itself_.

Sensei knew that. Al smiled, in the floating stillness, with the satisfaction of that thought. 

Maybe Nii-san did too. Those last lines in his notes: "The Gate is in every living heart". Living. Yes. And it all connected, because the circled dot was also the Eye, and Nii-san had drawn the eye in his first notes about the Gate, hadn't he?

The simple circled dot in Al's head gained more lines, a curve above and below, and a glory radiating around it. It wasn't sketched anymore, though. 

He looked closer.

It was... carved. 

He reached out to run his fingers over the texture, which was weirdly slick and sharp, and another line appeared, running straight down the middle. He realized that the eye was carved on a slab, and the slab was really two slabs. It was... a door. 

It cracked open.

 

Al jerked and floundered wildly for a moment before he was sure his head  
was really above water. He clutched the rock, panting a little while  
the adrenaline burn died back to a sizzle in his blood.

Had he just fallen asleep out here? In the _water_? He was lucky he hadn't drowned!

Wait, no, he'd been thinking something. Something big. Al chewed on his lip, trying to remember, but all he could catch hold of were fragments of ideas about gold and circles and life. He pounded his fist, lightly, on the stone, annoyed. "Damn damn damn damn _damn_!" 

Finally he let it go and pulled in a deep, calming breath. He'd have to try to catch hold of it again tonight, as he was falling asleep, and hope he could hold on to enough to write it down. For now, he'd just work off his annoyance by swimming back to shore, and maybe not mention this to Sensei. If she knew he'd 'wasted' his exercise time thinking, she might get more direct about making _sure_ he got more physical activity. 

## Izumi

Izumi scrambled out of bed, ignoring Sig's grunt as she planted a hand on his stomach for leverage.

Al had screamed.

She strode down the hall and threw open his door, eyes sweeping the room for any threat. But there was only Alphonse, bolt upright in bed, eyes huge and dark and staring at nothing. She came and took his shoulders gently. "Al? Al, wake up. It's all right."

She hoped she wasn't lying.

His hands closed on her arms hard enough to bruise. "Empty," he gasped, sounding like he'd been running for miles, and maybe for his life. "It echoed. Inside me was empty and it echoed!" 

Izumi slid further onto the bed and cuddled Al as if he weren't almost as tall as she was. As if she could enfold and protect him. Her lips were pale and tight as she stared over his head into the darkness. "It's all right," she murmured again. "You're here. It's now. There's no echo now, right?"

The desperate tension in him unwound just a little, and he started shaking against her. "I... yes. I mean, no. I mean..."

"Shhhh." Izumi stroked his hair, sifting her fingers through the springy strands. She had almost hoped she was wrong about what he meant, but no such luck. She sighed, resting her cheek against the top of his head, rocking him a little as the shaking grew worse and the shoulder of her nightgown started getting wet. 

He'd found it. Or it had found him. And in the morning she'd have to try to figure out how. Try to find some way to keep the idiot boy from diving head-first into the Gate after his stolen memories and destroying himself with his own brilliance.

Again.

But for tonight they could both pretend that she could protect him, and that everything would be all right. And if the world could spare them both just a little kindness, maybe he could sleep out the night safe in her arms. 

**End**


End file.
